Hybridization in Andean Nectar Bandits

In nature, hybrid zones are where two species or varieties meet and cross-fertilize,
such as the classic donkey + horse = mule. A single hybrid zone is scientifically
important for understanding how species diverge. So imagine the excitement of finding
not just one, but two hybrid zones in the Andes of South America. And even cooler,
the hybrid zone is the home of a special type of bird, flowerpiercers, who steal nectar
from plants using their pirate-hooked bills. Anna Hiller, LSU Museum of Natural Science Ph.D. candidate, tells us what hybrid zones are, what we can learn from them, and
how she is using the flowerpiercers as her model. She also shares adventures from
her previous expeditions and how her passion to include women in science is informing
her upcoming field trips to Peru and Bolivia. (Transcript below.)

Additional Resources

LSU Experimental is a podcast series that shares the research and the “behind the
scenes” stories of LSU faculty, student, and alumni investigators across the disciplines.
Listen and learn about the exciting topics of study and the individuals posing the
questions. Each episode is recorded and produced in CxC Studio 151 on the campus of
Louisiana State University, and is supported by LSU Communication across the Curriculum
and LSU College of Science. LSU Experimental is hosted by Dr. Becky Carmichael and
edited by Kyle Sirovy.

This is LSU Experimental, where we explore exciting research occurring at the Louisiana
State University and learn about the individuals posing the questions. I'm Becky Carmichael.

In nature hybrid zones are where two species or varieties meet and cross fertilize,
such as the classic donkey plus horse equals mule. A single hybrid zone is scientifically
important for understanding how species diverge. So imagine the excitement of finding
not just one, but two hybrid zones in the Andes of South America. And even cooler
the hybrid zone is the home of a special type of bird, flowerpiercers, who steal nectar
from plants using their pirate-hooked bills. Anna Hiller, LSU Museum of Natural Sciences
Ph.D. candidate, tells us what hybrid zones are, what we can learn from them and how
she is using the flower piercers as her model. She also shares adventures from her
previous expeditions and how her passion to include women in science is informing
her upcoming field trips to Peru and Bolivia.

Anna Hiller

[1:12] Hi, my name is Anna Hiller and I'm a graduate student at the LSU Museum of
Natural Science. I study high elevation hybrid zones in a really fascinating group
of birds, called the flowerpiercers. And the name flower piercers actually refers
to their really cool natural history. These birds are a type of tanger found in the
Andes of South America. And they're really unique because they have curved bills with
the hook on the end, almost like a pirate's hook that they used to poke holes in the
bases of flowers. This allows them to steal nectar from the flower without pollinating
it, like hummingbirds would do. So sometimes they're even called nectar robbers. Why
I'm excited about the flowerpiercers is because of their interesting colors.

For example, the group called the close a Diglossa carbonia, a complex, which is made
up of four different species, can present two different plumage colors, and combination
of orange and black, and a combination of gray and black. But what is even cooler
is that in Diglossa carbonia, there are not just one but actually two replicated hybrid
zones. Hybrid zones refer to an area where two species come into contact with overlapping
ranges and interbreed. Think horse plus donkey equals mule. Hybrid zones allow us
then to test questions like, who was mating with who and what did the offspring look
like? These data then allow us to compare how speciation is occurring in these different
areas.

These two areas of overlap located in Bolivia and Peru essentially provide me a natural
evolutionary experiment. Because not only are there replicant hybrid zones, but both
pairs of birds have similar colors. This January, I will be conducting a three week
trip to the Andes of Northern Peru to collect some of the first modern genetic samples
from the Peruvian hybrid zone between Diglossa humeralis, which is black, and Diglossa
brunneiventris, which is orange to understand how these two species transition, and
the distribution of colors in this region of Peru.

Now I completely fell in love with the Andes when I studied abroad in Ecuador in 2012
as an undergraduate student, and on a trip we visited the Paramos of the Northern
Andes, which is this high elevation humid grassland, unique to the northern Andes.
And this is actually where Diglossa humeralis, the black species in the Diglossa carbonia
group is found. And while I've participated on other expeditions, this trip is particularly
exciting for me, because it's the first time that I've been given the opportunity
to lead my own expedition. This means I'm responsible for organizing the research
supplies, coordinating the team and ensuring the safety of the group.

I was inspired by the expedition I participated in this past summer, which was led
by my fellow classmate Glaucia del Rio to Brazil, where we were looking at if there
were different species on the west and east banks of the Jurua River, and if there
were hybrid zones between these species. This expedition was the first trip out of
LSU with a field team made up entirely of women. To continue to ensure women are included
on expeditions, I have invited two Peruvian women from our collaborating institution
CORBIDI to come on my trip. This will train these students in crucial field work and
foster international collaborations to ensure rich museum collections for future use.
Continued expeditions ultimately help all scientists to better understand the natural
world and to document how species form in one of the most biodiverse mountain ranges
in the world.

Becky Carmichael

[0:20] Hi, Anna, how are you today?

Anna Hiller

[0:21] Hi doing good. Thanks for having me.

Becky Carmichael

[0:23] Oh, of course. Thank you so much for finding time to join us. I understand
that you're going to be a very busy individual in the upcoming months. So I'm glad
you had some time today.

Anna Hiller

[0:33] Yeah.

Becky Carmichael

[0:35] Um, so the way we'd like to get things started is for you to tell us a little
bit about yourself and your background. What drew you into ornithology? Yeah, what
what drew you into ornithology?

Anna Hiller

[0:48] So I guess growing up, my family was always very outdoorsy and into camping.
We go camping every summer all over California. And so I was always really into Interested
in wildlife and biodiversity and conservation. And then I really got into birds specifically
in undergrad when I started taking classes. I took an introductory course, IV104 natural
history of the vertebrates, and that was kind of a mini ornithology mammalogy herpetology
course. So that's when I really got into birdwatching and birds. At the same time.
I was working at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley, and started working
in the bird collection and getting to catalog study skins and seeing just amazing
diversity of birds that we have in the world. And it was it really fascinated me.

Becky Carmichael

[1:42] So you were a native of California, then

Anna Hiller

[1:45] Yep, born and raised in California, and then applied to grad schools kind of
all over but LSU has one of the best ornithology graduate programs in the world. And
when I came here, yeah, it was just amazing and the museum community here is incredible.
There's no snow in Baton Rouge, Southern California that was you know, nice.

[2:10] Um, so can you tell me who was or when did you actually get to Baton Rouge?
When did you move here?

Anna Hiller

[2:17] Fall of 2016 right, yeah, fall 2016. Right. I literally moved out the day before
the big floods of August 2016. So that was an experience, but

Becky Carmichael

[2:28] Oh, wow.

Anna Hiller

[2:29] I survived. I'm still here.

Becky Carmichael

[2:30] Glad you're still here. That's not the kind of welcome that we would like to
give someone. Um, so you had this. You had this particular class and you were working
in a museum previously? Have you had a particular inspiration that really drew you
into this field?

Anna Hiller

[2:44] Yeah. So I like a person you mean?

Becky Carmichael

[2:47] Yeah.

Anna Hiller

[2:48] Yeah. So as an undergraduate, I worked with Carla Cicero, who was the staff
curator birds museum there. And just in general in Berkeley, there was a really amazing
group of women biologists. And curators museum there. I also worked for Rosemary Gillespie,
who's one of the world experts on Hawaiian adaptive radiations and specifically spiders.
She's a curator of entomology arachnids at the Essig Museum of Entomology in Berkeley.
So I worked with a majority of women in my undergrad, actually and they were always
super supportive. And I consider all of them kind of inspirations, working.

Becky Carmichael

[3:29] And that's pretty incredible that you had that off the bat as an undergrad,
it's really kind of expose you to ...

Anna Hiller

[3:36] Yeah.

Becky Carmichael

[3:36] ... this this diverse field, right?

Anna Hiller

[3:38] Yeah.

Becky Carmichael

[3:38] So let's, let's get right into your own research. Tell me a little bit about
it and the main focus that you're doing here at LSU.

Anna Hiller

[3:46] So I'm studying birds in the Andes and ultimately trying to understand why
are there so many species of birds in these tropical mountains. The Andes are the
single most biodiverse places on the planet in terms of they hold the most species
of any place in any mountain range of the planet. So I'm really interested in how
these species form, which ultimately lets us understand why are they so diverse? So
I'm studying a group of birds called the flowerpiercers and using their repeated color
patterns and repeated hybrid zones to understand how speciation plays out in these
mountain ranges.

Becky Carmichael

[4:27] Okay, so tell me a little bit about these flowerpiercers. What do they look
like give us some descriptions.

Anna Hiller

[4:32]

They're really small like you might think, for us here, kind of North America like
a little Finch or warbler, about that size.

Becky Carmichael

[4:41] Just a couple inches.

Anna Hiller

[4:42] Yeah, a couple inches. And they have these really cool hooked bills that they
use to pierce the base of flowers and steal nectar from flowers without actually pollinating
it. Like you think of a hummingbird with a curved bill that fits nicely into the flower
and extracts nectar and then the flower gets pollinated. It's a nice kind of happy
story. Well, but I study the the flowerpiercers. So there, they pierce the base of
the flower and rob or steal nectar instead, which is kind of a fun fact. And then
they have some really amazing plumage colors and patterns from blue to orange to black
to gray that has evolved multiple times throughout the group. So I'm interested in
understanding the evolutionary history of that.

Becky Carmichael

[5:29] And these are birds that are all within that same use of the same Andes mountain
range in Peru?

Anna Hiller

[5:35] So most of the species are, well, they're distributed from Argentina through
Mexico. But most of the species are in the tropical Andes. So that's going to be Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela.

Becky Carmichael

[5:47] Okay. So that's it. That's a pretty big geographical ...

Anna Hiller

[5:52] Yeah, that's one of the things I find really interesting about them is that
they show this really wide range, but then you know, in Mexico in Argentina, in Central
America, there's only one species that lives on a given mountain. But if you go more
towards the tropics, there can be up to six or seven species at a given mountain range
kind of region of the Andes.

Becky Carmichael

[6:17] Okay, so let's, let's talk a little bit about this, this range, the Andes Mountains.
You've got a pretty unique field side, I understand. You've got several countries
that you need to visit. I'm going to imagine that I myself have never been there,
but I'm going to make the assumption that many of the listeners haven't either. Could
you describe this location for us?

Anna Hiller

[6:44] In Peru or in Bolivia?

Becky Carmichael

[6:47] Let's do a little bit of both.

Anna Hiller

[6:48] Okay, so...

Becky Carmichael

[6:49] what are some of the sights and smells that you might experience there?

Anna Hiller

[6:53] So in Bolivia, the habitats are really striking because there's this transition
from the tropics, which is really humid kind of rain forests, lots of ferns, clouds,
to really dry desert like environments with cactus and no trees or very few trees
over the matter of a couple hundred meters. It's really incredible and striking.

Becky Carmichael

[7:18] Wow.

Anna Hiller

[7:18] And that I got to go visit a site like that in Bolivia, because it was a year,
two years ago, January of 2018, with an LSU team, studying the very end of this these
tropical forests and where they turn over into these temperate drier habitats. And
that's where my study species was at the very edge of the humid tropical habitats
and it was so cool to get to go see them in the wild, and then witness this transition
myself. And what do you notice? So, Diglossa live at very, very high elevations. And
so one of the things you notice is it's always harder to breathe. You're walking around
really slowly. It's super easy to get dehydrated or get a headache. Because you're
incredibly high altitude. So you're getting kind of low level altitude sickness kind
of all the time.

Becky Carmichael

[8:14] Oh my goodness, are you so you talking about like, what? Like 5000, 6000 feet
are higher?

Anna Hiller

[8:19] Oh, way higher. So it's 3600 meters to about 4000 meters. Usually the sites
I'm visiting for my study species don't know what that is in feet, but it's very,
very high.

Yeah, and what else do you notice? It's really sunny because you're at such high elevations.
If you're not in that humid tropical cloud forest and you start going higher into
this desert, altiplano is what sometimes called that you'll, there won't be very many
clouds and you're in such high elevations that it's really easy to get a sunburn and
just get sun kind of exposure from those high elevations.

Becky Carmichael

[9:18] Wow. So you've really got to be prepared for this physically enduring this
field site. I want to jump back a little bit because I want to know a little bit more
about the flowerpiercers the birds that you're studying. Are these birds pretty common
throughout this area?

Anna Hiller

[9:39] So it totally depends on the species. The species that I study is incredibly
common if you're in the right habitat. So at these higher elevations, they typically
are in areas that are a little bit more humid with a little bit of water nearby with
plants, so they feed on flowers, there's no flowers, and it's totally dry, they're
probably not going to be there. But if you go to the right habitat, they're kind of
a stunted forest. So at the very edge of these transition zones, higher elevations,
the forest gets very, very short and very, very mossy. And they really like those
types of habitats. And in in those regions, they can be incredibly abundant. But then
actually, as you get into Colombia and Venezuela, there are two endangered species
of flowerpiercers as well. And those I don't work on because we anything endangered,
it's it's very sensitive to be taking samples from those species and things like that.
So we don't we don't work on those. But in Peru, Bolivia, where I work, they're pretty
common.

Becky Carmichael

[10:38] Well, that's interesting and I mean, that makes sense to me too, because,
yeah, got to put you if it's very diverse, maintaining as much diversity as you can
sampling. So why are these particular flowerpiercers? Why are they so ideal for you
the research questions you're interested in?

Anna Hiller

[10:59] First, just because I'm interested in species and how species form and mountain
ranges, and especially tropical mountain ranges, they are restricted to only mountains
like they live from Argentina all the way to Mexico. But they aren't found really
in much of Brazil outside of the very northern mountains a little bit. So they're
restricted to mountains. And they're found at a bunch of different elevations. In
then again, they have that kind of pattern of different amounts of different numbers
of species at different latitudes. So that also kind of provides evidence for how
species form in the tropics versus in the temperate regions and the fact that there
are more species in general in the tropics than in more temperate regions. And then
logistically too LSU has been working in Peru and Bolivia and has some really amazing
collaborators in those country and has been working there for decades now. And so
I wanted to work on a species In countries where we have these existing collaborations
so that I could work with people that we've worked with in the past, and continue
to build those partnerships that are really critical to any kind of international
research. And then lastly, the flowerpiercers, again, are pretty common in their habitats,
which means you're actually likely to find enough to do any kind of study with where
you need a lot of individuals of a given species. So working on something really rare
or hard to find, or really, you know, large that moves around a lot is always going
to be harder than working on something really tiny, where there's a ton of them, and
they're easy to find. It's kind of always ideal for at least for a dissertation. And
having

Becky Carmichael

[12:46] And having and I think making doing the best you can to make things as easy
on yourself as possible because dissertations are stressful, that research is also
very stressful. So trying to figure out how can I answer the question in make sure
I have as much much there that can help me out.

So Anna, you mentioned in your monologue that this particular location and these,
you called it a, a complex these, the species was a complex. What makes this? And
you mentioned that it was a natural experiment. Can you tell us a little bit more
about that and describe these hybrids zones?

Anna Hiller

[13:25] Yeah, so we know that in both Bolivia and Peru that these two species overlap,
they occur at a given place, you'll find both species together or fairly close together.
And the really big question is, are they hybridizing? If so, how much and what do
hybrids look like? How common are they? And in both of those sites, and that tells
us a lot about how species form, how reproductively isolated are these different species
because if they don't. If orange birds only breed with orange birds and black birds
only breed with black birds, that tells us that those are fully formed species. But
if they don't care, and orange birds will breed with black birds just as commonly
as black birds will breed with orange birds, then that tells us that they're not quite
fully species yet. And then we can use genetics to figure out what parts of the genome
might be contributing to species forming or not forming.

Becky Carmichael

[14:29] And that genome can also give you some idea about why we're seeing particular
plumages. And then also is interesting, because I'm thinking then, if you're seeing
this mix, and it's not fully formed species yet.

You may not be answering this the that I'm imagining there's two room for looking
at even sexual selection within these species

Anna Hiller

[14:54] So what's really interesting in the flowerpiercers is they're actually not
sexually dimorphic. So you cannot tell males and females apart in your hand. Yeah.
So I would be very skeptical if sexual selection is a major driver, specifically in
the group. I'm studying the carbonarea complex. But there's a couple theories then
as to why they would have these kind of interesting plumage patterns and colors. One
would be natural selection, like blending into their environment, the black birds
are much more humid forest, which is going to be much darker. So to blend in and avoid
predators, or also, yeah, just in general, kind of match your environment for a variety
of reasons that they're black, but then the orange birds are in more arid environments,
they might match kind of that open desert better. Or because these are birds that
feed on flowers and nectar resources that are very scarce. And they kind of come and
go as the flowers come and go. Typically, birds that feed on those like hummingbirds
are really territorial. Once they find the flowers, they don't want to give them up.
They don't want anybody else to feed on them, because that's less food for that given
bird. And so things like shoulder patches and mustaches that stripe on the face might
be social cues to assert dominance and be involved in those territorial territoriality.
But we don't we don't know and, you know, maybe something we can test in the future.
Find out.

That'll be exciting. I'm also as a side note, I'm kind of gonna laugh thinking about
birds with mustaches.

One of them is called a mustache flowerpiercer.

Becky Carmichael

[16:36] A mustache flowerpiercer?

Anna Hiller

[16:37] Yeah, that's the common name is the one I'm studying. But I want to see a
picture of that one and even shown you've shown me some pictures and we'll share those
online with with anyone that's interested that the birds that when you're talking
about them being orange or black, it is really interesting because it's not like a
completely solid orange bird. It's patches of orange on its body, there's patterns
involved as well, which is kind of a new emerging area of research in bird coloration.
Moving beyond kind of, you know, we know a lot about what makes a bird, an albino
bird or all black. Or all one color, another color, but the more fine scale processes
that contribute to these specific patterns. And why is how and why are these colors
distributed in a given bird, in an individual has, you know, orange one place in black
and other place? Something we don't know a lot about in birds in our kind of learning
a lot about right now.

Becky Carmichael

[17:39

So we have all these different patterns, and you've got these different locations,
you're going to sample Can we talk a little bit about how do you how do you actually
find? How did you actually find these locations? And then how do you go about collecting
the birds?

Anna Hiller

[17:54] Yeah. So the locations This is my site is actually building on two. Previous
studies on the same complex one's by Francois Vuilleumier. And in the early to mid
1900s. And then Gary graves when he did his master's degree at LSU, in the 80s actually
also studied the Diglossa carbonaria complex. So I'm building on those collections.
So we know a lot about where this region of overlap occurs. But actually, those two
collections were done before anyone was taking tissue samples or any kind of genetic
samples. So I'm going to go back and kind of revisit these contact zones decades later,
to see whether the distribution of birds you know, whether one species and or the
other species overlap in the same amount, whether that's still the same and then also
collect some of the first genetic material for these, this group in those two regions.

Becky Carmichael

[18:53] I want to talk to you a little bit about the samples that you are collecting
in the field.

What is that process? Like? Can we talk about a little bit about that?

Anna Hiller

[19:04] Yeah, so usually, we try as best we can ahead of time to pick our field sites
using Google Earth and know what we know from past exhibitions about what birds are
going to be there. But then you also you kind of get there and you have to look around
and really figure out on like, locally within that region where the birds found where
the abundant and then usually we'll put up nets, they're really fine mesh called Miss
nets. And that's how we'll catch the birds. And then we do catch the birds will take
a lot of data like weight, size, and then we can preserve tissue samples like blood
and feathers and things like that, to document the phenotypes and the and obtain genetic
material from the birds in these regions.

Becky Carmichael

[19:51] And so you have these mist nets put up do you are you putting them in strategic
locations, how do you get the birds

Anna Hiller

[19:57] Yeah, so we for a trip like this where really specifically looking at one
species will use bluetooth speakers, and we'll play recordings of these bird songs
and they're so territorial that they'll get really mad and come into investigate that
song that's playing, and then they'll fall right into the mist nets that they can't
see. So theoretically, it's easy, you know, you know, we'll see when it comes down
to it, how easy they are to find.

Becky Carmichael

[20:27] I guess it depends on how territorial they're feeling in that moment. And
if that music...

Anna Hiller

[20:32] What time of day it is, you have to go pretty early, otherwise they get sleepy
and they you know, won't respond too strongly later in the day but

Becky Carmichael

[20:39] And so once you have the samples collected, how do you how do you transport
those back to the United States or to this, your collaborating institution?

Anna Hiller

[20:49] Yeah, so we typically prefer preserved samples like the blood in ethanol and
then we also have a liquid nitrogen tank, which is a giant thermos that contains liquefied, really,
really cold nitrogen. And when we put samples in there, genetic samples, they freeze
instantaneously flash frozen is kind of the term for that. And then when we get back
and anytime we're getting on an airplane, whether that's back to our collaborating
institution or back to the US, we dump out the nitrogen and the tank will stay cold
for a few days after that. It'll just contain our frozen samples in a giant thermos
like you what you would keep soup in, but it'll be keep everything cold instead of
warm.

Becky Carmichael

[21:35] So imagine you have to really work closely with different agencies and airline
groups in order to transport these materials.

Anna Hiller

[21:44] Yeah. So there's all kinds of permits involved with any kind of transport
of biological samples. We have US Fish and Wildlife permits, Migratory Bird permits,
we have to provide documentation to the USDA that everything is you know, not contaminated,
not going to bring in a weird disease to the US, as well as in our hosts country have
permission from our collaborators, and whatever government agencies are involved,
whether that's parks for protected areas, or their, you know, wildlife and environmental
into the ministries have to give us permission to take those samples out of the countries
they came from. So there's lots of steps and paperwork involved. But we've been pretty
successful so far, getting things out.

Becky Carmichael

[22:32] That's good. And I mean, I understand why those those things are in place.
It's to protect both the wildlife as well as, I guess, wildlife in both locations.
And even

Anna Hiller

[22:42] Yes, actually wildlife and intellectual property rights. You know, making
sure that no one's doing science secretly without the right permits without asking
permission without bringing collaborators along. Because I mean, for so many years
our science was done that way, unfortunately. So we try really hard to involve, you
know, at every step of the process, the people that need to be involved in our collaborators
and everything.

Becky Carmichael

[23:11] And so what are some of the challenges that you encounter with getting samples
back to the United States.

Anna Hiller

[23:18] Lots of things, you need all kinds of permission to do that you need permission
ahead of time to even go down and collect samples in any foreign country, you need
permission from the government to be invited to do that. And then we always work with
a collaborating institution in our host country, to also make sure that we have representatives
from the country we're working with us. And then to do the actual export. We so that
initial agreement is called a convenio and then to do the actual export, you submit
a list of the specific things that you collected under that agreement and explain
the division of specimens and tissues between museums. So what are we leaving behind?
What are we taking LSU sometimes. Oftentimes things will specimens will come to LSU
on loan and then be returned a couple years later when a student finishes their dissertation
back to Peru or Bolivia, and then anytime it's something, a sample, particularly kind
of culturally important. So if it's the first time that our collaborating institution
has gotten a sample of a species, they'll oftentimes request that stays behind with
them. Or if it's a new species, we always deposit the holotype, which is the first
or most it's the specimen used in the description of the species that always stays
behind. If it was something like a first country record that, you know, could be something
that they would want as well. So we always kind of negotiate back and forth with our
collaborators and make sure that kind of their wishes are being met. And then we submit
that to the government and it goes through. And it's usually kind of the environmental
ministry and they read through our proposal and then approve the export. And then
it goes back and you have to do a bunch of sort of certifications and get it inspected.

Becky Carmichael

[25:19] How real quick because I just thought about this. Um, so you mentioned this
thermos, you said, it can keep things cold for a couple of days. So, how many how
many days have you traveled with one of these to get from back to the United States?

Anna Hiller

[25:42] Me personally, I've had to leave it empty for about two days. And that's not
super bad. We did an export kind of remotely a few months ago from Bolivia. And that
was really complicated because we are trying to send samples kind of ultimately the
tank had to come later. And without anyone kind of coming with it in there usually
we just send it like us checked bags because the airlines have policies that do allow
us to bring these tanks on airplanes. And this time we had to send it cargo so getting
that coordinated and making sure it got here it just took several days longer than
I wanted it to which was a little bit stressful but it got to the US and I was able
to pack it with dry ice and then they made it tell us you so.

Becky Carmichael

[26:29] Yeah because I would imagine that you've got quite a travel time yeah from
one point to the other.

Anna Hiller

[26:37] It's always really exhausting I mean trips like this in general you're doing
fieldwork is really exhausting. But then at the end trying to get everything back
is kind of a whole other form of exhaustion and heartache and stress but

Becky Carmichael

[26:52] Oh yeah, process. This is actually the fun part, the field work is the fun
part is kids

You shared with me that you're not just going into 2020 on one trip, but you have
three trips, right? Yeah, up to three trips up to three trips. So, do you want to
share a little bit about what those trips are going to be? And why you're going? Why
is it so important to go when you're going?

Anna Hiller

[27:25] Yeah, so I'm going this January to Peru. And that'll be for a little bit over
a month to look for my study species in that hybrid zone in northern Peru. And in
the Andes, in South America, in the southern hemisphere, their summer and winters
are reversed. So when we're in northern hemisphere in our winter, it's their summer,
and just like here, the birds breed and kind of spring and summer and so the time
to go is really January, February, kind of that time of year. So I'll be going in
January to Peru, and then coming back in February. And then the current plan is to
then go at the beginning of March to Bolivia, and do a trip to Bolivia in March to
do survey the hybrid zone there in Bolivia. But that trips a little bit still up in
the air because of kind of recent political tensions in Bolivia. So we're working
closely with our collaborators to make sure that that trips done safely and that we
at the very least have people with us from the towns were working in to advise us
on where is safe to go or not go and things like that. But that's still developing,
but I'm definitely going to prove

Becky Carmichael

[28:43] So from your past experiences, what are you what are some of those experiences
from those past expeditions that you are considering and then applying these upcoming
trips?

Anna Hiller

[28:58] So I think it's always important to communicate with the people who live in
the region you're working with. And that can take many different forms, depending
on where you're going, but to the best of your ability, telling a town that you're
going to be there and that you're serving the birds of the region. And, you know,
ask them if they have any concerns or places that they don't want you to go is always
really important. It can be challenging if there's no discrete town around to figure
out who might own the land you're working on. Sometimes it's just pretty open, and
there's no one there, which case you might just work and then explain if anybody comes
by what you're doing and does ask. But that's always critical to try and make sure
that no one's caught off guard that you're there. At the very least, like what I've
done so far is email the list of sites to our proven collaborators and they have friends
that are birdwatchers in the reasons I'm going to so kind through the chain of communication,
getting people's thoughts on the locations, and do they know anyone in that area we
could talk to for advice and things like that.

Becky Carmichael

[30:08] So you've really had to work on creating a network, utilizing the network
that was previously created. And then and then reinforcing and creating new connections.

Anna Hiller

[30:19] Yeah, for sure. All in Spanish. So you know, have to speak multiple multiple
languages to anytime you're working internationally. Or at least trying to do your
own trips, independent of, you know, an advisor or something like that. You pretty
much have to speak the language or hire an interpreter the whole time are there because
it's so critical to be able to communicate.

Becky Carmichael

[30:40] So tell me a little bit about this team that's going to be going with you
to Peru. It's both Peru and Bolivia, right.

Anna Hiller

[30:46] So this January, I'll be going to Peru to Northern Peru near Cajamarca. Looking
for that region where both species occur and looking for hybrids doing that hybrid
zone survey, and it'll be a team of four of us, myself and three Peruvian students
and collaborators, Christian Felix, Katia Silva, and Erica Rodriguez, who are all
affiliated with Coredy, the institution we work with out of LSU, who's actually it's
run and founded by a former LSU graduate student, which is pretty cool to continue
that, and Tomas Valkia is the LSU alumni who founded the institution. Actually, he
founded it while he was still a graduate student at LSU, which is pretty incredible.

Yeah, the previous trips I've done to both Peru and Bolivia, I've been the only woman
on those teams. So it's exciting to get to lead my own team and kind of stack the
deck. Make sure that there's women this time and and then once we do train up students,
we oftentimes bring them on multiple expeditions in the future and it does open a
lot of doors so I hope that they can continue to work with LSU in the future as well.

Becky Carmichael

[31:34] That is incredible. That's a lot of energy for a student.

So I have a favorite one of the favorite questions I'd like to ask all of my participants
and in your area of work. I imagine that you've really had to be flexible and creative
out in the field. Do you know who MacGyver is?

Anna Hiller

[32:17] Kind of?

Becky Carmichael

[32:18] Okay, so 1985 TV series, this guy was the dude that could get out of any situation
with a paperclip and string. He was a mullet-wearing, you know, aficionado? Can you
share any moments or a favorite moment when you've had to improvise or MacGyver your
way to achieve your goal?

Anna Hiller

[32:42] Okay, I'll tell you the story and it doesn't necessarily it wasn't just me
MacGyvering it it was a group MacGyver effort. But when we were collecting my genome
bird in Peru outside of Lima we had driven up to the mountains is about 4300 meters
of elevation. At this reservoir and we had gone out birding, and we had, we're looking
for my birds, but also serving the birds in the region. And we saw this teeny tiny
car stuck out, they had driven way too close to the edge of the reservoir stuck in
a mudflat. And we were in a huge highlights four by four pickup truck, which is really
good and off-roading. So they were waving us down and trying to get help. And we felt
really bad for them because they're an hour and a half from any paved road or you
know, help. So we drove down and it looked like the ground was fine. And we drove
kind of up and around instead of through the mud flat to try and get to them and right
as we got close enough to be able to potentially pull them out. We sank straight into
this giant mud pit.

Becky Carmichael

[33:48] Hmm. In the truck?

Anna Hiller

[33:50] In the truck. Yeah. And this was like, all the way up to the floor of the
truck. Like all the wheels and axles and everything were complete.

Becky Carmichael

[33:57] Everything's buried.

Anna Hiller

[33:58] Everything's buried. This was late afternoon on Saturday, and we were supposed
to be driving back to Lima that night. And ultimately, we well Andre, who was the
other LSU graduate student on that trip with me walked into town and came back with
a group of eight Peruvian reservoir workers with shovels and pickaxes. And they were
trying to dig out our car first and we just kept sinking further into the mud because
our truck was so heavy. And then we tried to dig out the little dinky car and ultimately
got those guys out. But their car was too small, to pull our big pickup truck out
mud. So they ultimately gave our Peruvian collaborator ride down to the town and he
spent two or three hours convincing a pickup truck to drive off route or not a pickup
a tow truck to drive off the main highway and come and get us because the majority
of the tow trucks said no, I'll only tow people on paved roads on the highway. Not
this crazy dirt road you guys went down. So we finally found someone they show up,
drive up the mountain get there about 5pm they proceed to drive across to try and
get to us. And they sink, I can see it slow motion in my brain but they sink slowly
into an even bigger mud pit and their truck is even bigger and heavier than ours.
So now we're stuck up there, they're stuck up there, and it's getting dark. And we
ultimately just call it and say we have to spend the night in the trucks. So we went
into town and we bought the only case of bottled water and the entire there was little
like farming, shepherding village near the reservoir that the rest were workers and
these community members lived in. So we bought water off them and came back and Andre
lent his sleeping bag to the pickup truck drivers and the tow truck drivers and we
stayed in our truck. Woke up the next morning at 5:30 in the morning and then had
to proceed to try and dig ourselves out. And we used the the like lift of the, the
tow truck, the jack to jack up our car and throw boulders and rocks and sand under
our car. And like slowly, slowly kind of piled rocks up and not enough under the wheels
that we could drive the truck out, took us about an hour, we finally got the truck
out but then we had to get the tow truck out of the mud. And by this time we had tried
to dig them out earlier and they were still sinking. By this time it had started kind
of raining off and on there was a thunderstorm coming and we're at like 4200 meters
of elevation. There's no trees like we're way above treeline, which is really scary.
So we decided to drive into town and there were all these abandoned kind of falling
apart houses and we just started stripping them for huge chunks of concrete like pulling
down walls. And sticking in the back of our pickup truck and boards we got some dude
to loan us his two by fours which are like the nice fancy boards.

Becky Carmichael

[37:08] Is this not? Are you with some of the reservoir workers who was going and
stripping houses?

Anna Hiller

[37:13] No, they had gone back the night before they got the little car out so that
we could go get a tow truck and then they went home and they were like...

Becky Carmichael

[37:18] ... see y'all later.

Anna Hiller

[37:20] Yeah, it's our team of three biologists and then the two tow truck drivers
and so we weren't stripping out these were like abandoned falling apart houses. We
were then you know, taking bits of and we piled concrete and wood to the back of the
car drove over to the pickup truck and we're laying out. We're moving about two feet
every 10 minutes. And luckily by the time with those huge boards and chunks of concrete
we were able to hook our pickup truck to the tow truck and tow the tow truck out.
And with these longer pieces of wood and concrete, we were able to pull the pickup
trucker, the tow truck out with our pickup. And right as we get out, it started hailing.
So it was we, it was the perfect timing by about 30 seconds before it started hailing.
And if we had stayed in the reservoir when it was raining too, we would have just
gotten sunk farther into the mud. So we got everybody out, we returned the wood we
had borrowed, and we drove off down the mountain and drove all the way back to Lima.
And then I flew out of Peru the next day. So that was the MacGyvering was all of our
wood and concrete to try and get our truck out of the mud.

Becky Carmichael

[38:33] I think that also certifies as craziest experience in the field. So we're
definitely top five.

Oh my gosh, that's that's shocking. And it's scary. Oh, my goodness.

Anna Hiller

[38:50] Yeah. Luckily it was okay. And you know, there were people around to help
us do which was which was pretty critical

Becky Carmichael

[38:55] That sounds like it was very critical. I can hear the tow truck person, not
being extremely happy when he started to sink.

Anna Hiller

[39:02] Well, they were terrified that when they dug us out, we were just going to
drive off and leave them there.

Becky Carmichael

[39:07] Oh, no.

Anna Hiller

[39:08] Yeah. Because that's what when we had dug, dug the other two guys, the tourists
out, they had wanted to keep off. Keep going up the mountain to see more. And we eventually
convinced them that they really needed to help us get back and get a tow truck. Yeah.

Becky Carmichael

[39:25] Oh my goodness. So I want to thanks for sharing that one. That was fun. I
want to kind of circle back and just pop in because one of the things that you mentioned
earlier was the women that's going to be the women that are going to be involved in
your upcoming trip. I want I want to circle back to what you mentioned about the women
that are going to be involved in your trip and I understand that you were part of
an expedition to the Amazon this fall was part of the LSU Museum of Natural Science,
like all women expedition. Can you tell me a little bit about what was the purpose
of the trip? And why was that something that was so inspirational to you?

Anna Hiller

[40:15] Yeah. So that expedition was led by Glaucia del Rio, who's another student
in the Brumfield and Faircloth labs. And she herself has had to overcome a lot of
barriers as a Brazilian ornithologist and a woman. There aren't that many women field
biologists working well at least in her experience in Brazil and kind of Ornithology.
And so she wanted to highlight that issue but also work towards fixing it by leading
an all women LSU expedition. And and I should say there haven't been traditionally
that many women on LSU trips as well. And so her, myself, and Jessie Salter, another
grad student in the Faircloth and Brumfield labs. went down there and joined the team
of four Brazilian women, and a few other collaborators as well and did the eight of
us in total, spent a month on a boat in the Amazon surveying a really under surveyed
poorly known region and measured a wide river, poorly known at least in terms of its
bird communities. And also got to pay tribute to Emilie Snethlage, who's one of the
first she's the first woman to be director of a scientific institution in Brazil,
and probably one of the first women to ever be a curator of birds in North or South
America. And she was this really badass explorer, field biologist, woman and so we
wanted to also raise her profile and tell more people her story. So that's the name
of the expedition is it's named after her to pay tribute. Yeah, that was a really
amazing experience and I think that that mission of training up women and getting
more women the opportunity to participate in expeditions, and museum science is really
critical to diversifying our teams. But also the more diverse kind of points of view
you have, the better the science ultimately. So I think everyone's going to win. And
I wanted to carry that forward into my trip. And so I purposely invited two premium
women who both came highly recommended on my expedition.

Becky Carmichael

[42:28] That's exciting. And I think that it's always important when we can involve
others. In these experiences, showcase that it's possible include that those diverse
perspectives in our science, because I feel like if it's only if it's just only certain
groups, so even if it's only people from the US that are traveling, and they're not
in getting involved with their international counterparts, I feel like we're really
limiting ourselves and kind of what we can explore in terms of the science. I'm excited.
I was excited to hear that this was something that you were part of and I was also
excited to know that a group of women were going out and into these areas to really
to really do that exploring and study. What was your favorite part of that trip?

Anna Hiller

[43:23] The river dolphins were so cool. Like I've been on several rivers, now Amazonian
tributaries in Peru and Ecuador. But this river in particular was completely full
of dolphins like you could not go more than a few hours without seeing a pod of dolphins
go by.

Becky Carmichael

[43:42] Oh my gosh.

Anna Hiller

[43:43] And they were both the pink dolphins and the grey dolphins. And they were
just so playful, they would come right up to the boat. You'd be sitting there like
drinking your coffee in the morning watching river dolphins play, it was crazy. Like
that just doesn't happen and they were everywhere.

Becky Carmichael

[44:01] Oh my gosh.

Anna Hiller

[44:02] So and you were all on one boat. Yeah. So we had there were it was a team
of eight women plus including the women making the documentary and then a team, of
kind, of three assistants and guides and owners and drivers of the boat and then our
cook. So let's see what is that? 12 people. The whole time and all of our gear and
our prepping equipment and hammock so we had our hammock strung along the entire bottom
of the boat and open sides you can hear the dolphins at night...

Becky Carmichael

[44:35] Oh my gosh.

Anna Hiller

[44:36] ...was so deep in the water.

Becky Carmichael

[44:37] You had to have some pretty interesting sounds and and everything in the middle
of the night. Because I'm also imagining there's not a lot of light too

Anna Hiller

[44:44] Yeah, the stars were pretty incredible. Yeah, I mean, we did. So at night,
we would often be working till late into the night and we'd be running the generator.
So the sounds I most remember remember probably the sound of the boat, boat motor
and the generator but besides that we did get to see some really incredible owls at
two, we did go out kind of at dawn or dusk. And when you do turn the motor off kind
of in the middle of the night, just being out in the river is really cool. And you
hear the water going by now the dolphins and...

Becky Carmichael

[45:18] There's something magical about being in a field, in a situation where your
research allows you to be in the field and be in these particular locations to have
those experiences because I don't think that and a lot of spaces and we don't get
to have those those types of connections. And so I think that it, at least for me,
personally, I know it draws me in and builds my connection even deeper with those
areas, but it also helps foster my curiosity. Yeah, back to you, your own your work
with the flowerpiercers what what's the major impact to you hope this work is going
to have.

Anna Hiller

[45:56] So I think that in terms of understanding how species form in the Andes. We
know a lot at this larger scale, we know, kind of, how many species there are in a
given area and roughly how they're related to each other. But I think this really
fine scale understanding of how one species changes into another, how long does that
take? Is it reversible like you can imagine if the two species are hybridizing, or
mixing back together, they might just eventually mix completely back into one. And
so understanding kind of the future trajectory of these species too lets us understand
how species form and then also ultimately how best to conserve them going forward
as as landscapes and climates continue to change in the future as well.

Becky Carmichael

[46:53] And then imagine this is going to give us maybe some perspective for other
places where there's similar kinds of complex kind of hybridization zones. That can
help potentially tease out some of the understanding there.

Anna Hiller

[47:03] Yeah, there's a lot most hybrid zones have been studied out of Europe and
North America. So this is one of the few examples of hybrid zones in South America
that will be really well, at least South American Andes. That will be really well
studied. There's a few studies out of Columbia, Dialga Dana's lab, and a few out of
University of New Mexico also in collaboration with Caribbean in Peru, understanding
Peruvian hybrid zones, but just a handful. So this will really contribute, I think,
a lot to our understanding of speciation and region.

Becky Carmichael

[47:42] So one of the last things that I I have to ask is getting involved and I think
that I know personally, I like to share my interest in science with others and even
look for other opportunities to where I can continue to kind of to explore in my,
in my work as well as kind of its what are we doing to inspire others? So what advice
would you want to share with someone who wants to get involved with this particular
type of work?

Anna Hiller

[48:15] Um, I think it depends kind of, you know where you are, and like, whether
in terms of like volunteering or a career, but I think most museums have some kind
of docent or volunteer program and I think that's a really great way to get involved,
you know, go to museum participate in some of their public events meet people. There's
a lot of typically in birds at least, like preparing museum specimens, we get a lot
of birds that die, getting hit by cars or electric, you know, power wires or natural
kind of weather disasters. And those birds ultimately end up frozen at the museum
and we turn those into Museum study skins so that you know they, sad that they die,
but they can be used for science and will last for hundreds of years that way. And
a lot of times volunteers will help us prepare those specimens at LSU. And other museums
as well. As well as you know, just in general, spreading the word about biodiversity
and about museums and how, you know, we, in order to conserve biodiversity, we really
need to understand it first. And that's ultimately the mission of museums is to document
describe and understand the world around us.

Becky Carmichael

[49:27] Anna, I want to really, sincerely thank you for today, taking time, I know
you're really busy at the end of this semester, and preparing for these upcoming trips.
But it's really been a pleasure to learn more about what you're doing. And I'm excited
to learn and see this next stage of your collection process.

Anna Hiller

[49:46] Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was fun. And I hope to be back in the
future.

Becky Carmichael

[49:50] That would be that would be fantastic because I want to hear more about what
you find. Thank you!